The Prince and the Ice King by Amanda Meuwissen

Chapter 13

IF REARDONthought the long journey home from the Frozen Kingdom was more grueling than he’d remembered, then doing the same journey once more with a mystical dagger plunged into his chest was the worst torture he had ever known. At least this time he had the comfort of a wagon, though every bump in the road made him wince.

The only thing that would be worse was if he failed to catch up to Lombard in time.

Reardon and those who’d chosen to join him couldn’t push onward without resting, however. They camped briefly the first night and were doing so again before the final leg to the castle the following morning. If Reardon had calculated correctly, they were set to arrive right on Lombard’s heels. He wished that gave him comfort or eased his pain as he lay down, trying to rest.

This time, he had asked for space, because he hated to see the discomfort on his people’s faces when they looked upon the dagger or saw him cringe. He tried to keep it covered, but anything touching it, even just his cloak, made the pain worse.

He lay beside a fire with the dagger aimed upward at the open sky. Eating and drinking was a chore as well, but he’d choked down what he could. Now he longed for his exhaustion to let him sleep, if only for a little while, so he could forget how much his heart hurt—from so many things.

“Your Highness, I fear I know the answer, but I must ask… is there nothing that can be done to ease your suffering?”

Tilting his head, Reardon took in the visage of the elven guard who’d helped him, the first to speak up and bolster his fellows to do the same. Lombard had taken most of the guards with him, and Reardon had had to leave some in Emerald, but his company was still made up of a great multitude, just mostly artisans, shopkeeps, and farmers.

Watching them all beyond the elf who stood before Reardon reminded him of his first night at Jack’s castle. He’d been awed then to see so many elves and half-elves, to see men cuddled close to men and women holding hands with other women. Now he was seeing that same miracle in his own people.

He tried to smile at the guard, who was handsome without his helmet, his elven ears still prominent without whatever glamour had hidden them. He was tall and dark and stoic, with a poise to his stance that spoke of the honorable man he was. He’d even fetched Reardon’s sword belt from the palace before they gathered at the city gates and left, though Reardon doubted he could put his swords to much use in his sorry state.

“I wish I knew,” Reardon said. It still hurt to speak, but it didn’t hurt much less to stay silent. He glanced down his body at the dagger, bejeweled and beautiful, a once treasured possession. “Lombard said… I’d die if I tried to remove it. Perhaps… that is what I should do. If I die before he completes his plan, he can’t succeed.”

“Highness.” The guard stepped closer, as if ready to stop him.

Reardon didn’t bother lifting a hand to try. “If it comes to that, I might have to… but not yet. I need to reach those gates, to be sure everyone is well.” He clenched his eyes shut, and a tear streaked down his cheek.

The guard still hovered when Reardon opened them.

The guard. The elf.

“I don’t know your name,” Reardon realized. “I usually remember everyone in the castle. Are you new?”

“I was a city guard until recently. Robert, the man I love, is a city guard as well. I feared we were more likely to be caught if we worked too closely together, so I petitioned to serve as a castle guard instead. I’ve only been assigned there a week. My name is David, Highness, house of Zheck.”

“What a week,” Reardon remarked. “Your love knows of your feelings and lineage?”

“He does.”

“Is he here?”

A spark of remorse marred David’s strong façade. “I bid him farewell before we left. I begged him to stay behind and keep peace in the city. A few guards had to remain, and I….”

“You worried for him.”

“He’s more suited to be an artisan than a guardsman. He’s human, no magic, but he feared that anything other than picking up a spear would have made it too easy to tell… what he was.”

What.Even now, among friends and knowing that Reardon himself had admitted attraction to men, David said it in a hushed voice. “No longer,” Reardon said with an aggrieved raise of his head. “I swear.”

“Maybe I’ve left Rob to a worse fate, if those who still fear us rise up in our absence.”

“Our numbers are greater,” Reardon assured him. “And once my father is well, he’ll see reason after learning what saved him.”

“I hope so, my prince.” At last David allowed some of his tension to recede. “Your love is at the frozen castle?”

Reardon had explained as much as he could to those who followed him, about the once formidable Sapphire Kingdom, and while not giving the details of the curse as he had promised Jack, he explained that some of the people there might look like monsters, but they were not, not any more than an elf or a person with magic. He also hadn’t made it public that his love was the Ice King. He feared that might give credence to Lombard’s lies that Jack controlled him.

So Reardon kept his answer brief.

“He is. And I am going to save him. I am going to save all of them.”

“We are, Your Highness.” David bowed his head once more and offered a steadfast smile.

Reardon nodded gratefully back at him, and David took his leave to let his prince rest.

JACK STOODon the ramparts, not trying to hide his looming form, with all his court lining the walls with him. Oliver was farther down along another ledge to lead his archers, many others standing guard at any potential entrances onto the grounds, prepared to launch a strategic attack and volley magics they usually saved for quiet, domestic use.

Of Jack’s subjects, only Barclay stood with him and his court as they surveyed the approaching army.

Jack looked to Barclay then, who shook his head. Lombard led the Emerald soldiers, but Reardon wasn’t with them. Still, Barclay’s vision said that he would arrive eventually with a shadow hanging over him and his impending fate. All Jack could hope to do was hold off the soldiers until that path became clear.

“Zephyr,” Jack said, returning his eyes to the arriving troops, “when the fighting begins, if they be so foolish as to declare war, remind everyone to avoid killing unless they have no alternative. We will use fear more than force and hope they see reason. Now, carry my words to their leader.”

“Yes, Majesty,” Zephyr said.

There was a gentle rush of wind, and Jack knew when he spoke that his voice would boom forth as if from the gates themselves or a god calling down from the skies.

“You have your prince!” Jack declared. “Why do you return?”

The line of horses came to a stop with a simple raise of Lombard’s fist. There was a decent expanse between them and the gate yet, closed tight. Like Lombard, everyone at the front wore helmets, though many farther back did not, simple city guards brought along to fill their ranks.

Jack did not wish them any harm.

Lombard was another matter.

“You cursed our prince!” Lombard replied, loud enough that Jack would have heard him, however distantly, even without Zephyr magnifying his words. “You cursed our king! We come to avenge them and free them from your power!”

“I have no ability to curse,” Jack spat. “I merely bear my own.”

“Lies!” Lombard drew a mighty long sword that glittered in the sun. “We will no longer serve your whims! All magic must be eradicated! Only with the fall of your kingdom can ours be saved!”

A cheer rose up from the soldiers, echoing loudly over the castle exterior with Zephyr’s power amplifying their voices. Lombard didn’t elaborate. He didn’t need to; he’d clearly bolstered his men by filling their heads with falsehoods, and no one would listen to the words of the damned.

Jack wished he knew what had become of Reardon, but until that revealed itself, he would defend his people and his home with everything at his disposal.

“So be it,” Jack said and rose to his full height atop the ramparts. He saw the Emerald soldiers, with and without helmets, falter back at the sight of him. “If you wish to eradicate magic, then feel its wrath.”

“Ready!” Oliver ordered, and as Jack gave a nod, he continued, “Aim!” and a row of bows pointed skyward along the wall below the court.

Next to Jack, Branwen waved a fiery hand toward the archers and set each arrowhead ablaze.

“Fire!” Oliver finished, and the arrows arced like falling stars toward the front line of Lombard’s forces.

The horses reared up, frightened by the glow and whooshing sound, but the arrows struck the ground in a nearly perfect line, not hitting any people or creatures, simply creating a barrier of flames.

One by one, the court rose into the air, soaring downward to the front gate, Zephyr to pass on orders and the others to fight. Branwen kept the barrier lit, and Liam fired lightning bolts at the horses’ feet to drive the soldiers back.

Atop the gate wall, previously hidden people rose up on their knees, bearing dull, rounded shields that angled above their heads, as Josie flew by with an elegant touch, alighting the center of each one. The shields caught the sun so unexpectedly with their sudden golden sheens, that Emerald soldiers and horses alike were blinded, staggering back another meter.

As they stumbled and hesitated but didn’t yet retreat, Jack’s own riders appeared atop the few horses they had, led by the young elf Raphael. Behind the cavalry poured their meager but brave infantry, made up of fighters and wielders of magic. Some even ran right through Branwen’s fire, having taken protection draughts against it.

A few Emerald soldiers tried to flee the unexpected barrage, those that held steady looking horrified at the elves and humans alike casting spells to transmute swords into planks of wood or put horses into a dead sleep in the snow.

These men knew nothing of real magic, cast as easily as a bard telling a tale.

“Stay strong!” Lombard cried. “Their wickedness cannot stand against our cause!”

Liam shot a strike of lightning at his horse’s feet—but it bounced harmlessly away and fizzled into nothing, like hitting an invisible shield.

To the soldiers nearby who witnessed it—a miracle.

“To me!” Lombard ordered, riding through Jack’s ranks like parting reeds, with his soldiers swarming in behind him.

As quickly as spells were cast or elemental magic rained down upon Lombard, it all dispelled and fell away like he was blessed. Branwen’s fire even snuffed out when Lombard rode through it, and soon the expanse to the gate was mere meters.

“Now!” Liam ordered from where he floated above the courtyard—above the trebuchet Wynn had constructed.

Liam had told him what compounds to add as ammunition, and Wynn had complied, a full arsenal at their disposal. Nigel was there as well, preparing future rounds, as the first flung forward at Liam’s cry, launching what appeared to be a boulder but broke apart like dust, raining colorful speckles upon the approaching army.

They were too near the gate now, despite those trying to hold them back, and Jack watched Liam call down rain with a roll of dark clouds and thunder filling the sky. The second the water hit the dust that had coated the Emerald soldiers, the reacting combination turned the dust to sticky sludge.

Soldiers off their horses fell to the ground as if wading through muck, and the horses themselves had it worse, knees buckling and causing them to throw their riders.

As before, only Lombard seemed immune.

“He’s using magic?” Barclay darted to the edge of the wall beside Jack. “Or is it alchemy?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Jack growled, stepping onto the ledge to finally leave his perch.

“Wait!” Barclay cried. “What of my vision?”

“If your vision changes, we will all learn the truth long before you can warn anyone.” Jack turned his monstrous maw toward Barclay. “The soldiers know not what they do, but him I am not afraid to touch.”

With a crunch into the stones of the rampart wall, Jack leapt off to begin his descent, creating an icy ramp in his wake. He slid down the length of the castle at speeds that eventually launched him like the trebuchet had launched its weapon.

Jack landed with a similar crunch upon the front gate wall far from the line of golden shields, but close enough to where Lombard charged that Jack dropped right down in front of the gates and bellowed.

“Give room!” Then he stared Lombard and the other charging horses down as they all stopped short. “Any who dare touch me will earn an icy grave. So please, accuser, let it only be you.”

He could see Lombard’s eyes through the man’s helmet, blue and vibrant like his own.

“Jack!” Josie called from above him.

She had refused to use her touch as a weapon and was fearful of what Jack might do—or what might be done to him—but he could not be cowed. Around Jack, and farther out in the field beyond their gates, he saw so many good people fighting the army at their doorstep.

Like Shayla, a wickedly fast fighter with her twin daggers, cutting painful scratches into dozens of soldiers, one after the other, before they could counter, making them hiss and retreat—but not causing fatal harm.

And Caitlin, with her own elemental power, throwing icicles from her palms that hit soldiers’ ankles or shoulders, or she would cover the ground in ice that caused their horses to slip.

Everyone was doing what they could to keep from killing these men, but no one would mourn Lombard, who or whatever he truly was.

Jumping down from his horse, Lombard dropped his helmet into the snow, a cruel echo of when he’d last been there and embraced Reardon in front of those same gates. “You wish to challenge me directly, Ice King?” he said, squaring his stance with his long sword pointed outward.

“Gladly,” Jack growled and barreled forward with a mighty leap.

The sword struck his icy palm, holding him at bay, but no normal weapon could harm Jack, and he gripped it firm as he swiped with his other hand at Lombard’s head.

The ricochet stung more than Jack could have expected, his arm bouncing to the side, deflected like Liam’s lightning. While Jack stared in furious shock, Lombard heaved him away as though fighting with the strength of ten men.

Jack leapt at him again with a roar, but while the sword could strike Jack, whenever Jack tried to reach any part of Lombard, he was repelled. He swung and swung and swung at Lombard anyway, battering at him with palms and fists, each successive blow making him grit his teeth at how much it hurt.

Try as he might, Jack couldn’t touch him.

“You see! These demons cannot touch the righteous!” Lombard called—and then grinned, adding quietly for Jack’s ears only, “Did you think this would be easy?”

Attacking Jack with similarly vicious, battering strikes, Lombard hacked and hacked at him to drive Jack back. It didn’t hurt the way striking that magical barrier did. It barely chipped away even the tiniest flecks of Jack’s ice, but seeing their leader holding his own against the starring villain in their darkest tales, Lombard’s men rallied and began fighting back harder too.

Jack couldn’t allow it. He and Lombard weren’t even able to hurt each other, but he was being backed up to the gate. If the courtyard was breached, there was no telling what Lombard was capable of.

With a mighty stomp at the ground, a burst of ice poured forth from Jack, enough that Lombard’s footing faltered, and Jack was once again able to catch his sword on the following blow. Jack grabbed it in both hands and held firm, allowing his naturally frosty presence to creep upon its blade.

Lombard’s grin widened as they stared each other down, blue on blue, with barely a hand’s width between their faces. “You only make the tales they’ll sing to honor me more epic. Just like Reardon.”

Jack’s stomach plummeted.

“It’s you, isn’t it, the love he spoke of? Such soft skin and lips, that prince,” Lombard continued in a whisper, no strain on his face or in his arms as he continued to hold Jack at bay. “So easily shaped to my will. I would have been kinder to him if he’d only bent willingly, but he chose to stay loyal to you.”

“What have you done to him?” Jack demanded, with everything but Lombard giving way to his power, as even the snow turned to mounds of ice.

“He is far, far away, and when I claim your castle, he will be dead.”

Lombard hurled Jack to the side with such force, Jack toppled, collapsing to the ground and leaving the way clear to the gate. Once Lombard reached it, he used his sword like a battering ram and split the doors apart as though a cannonball had struck them.

Jack’s subjects along the wall scattered, holding their golden shields up to protect them from splintered wood and twisted metal fastenings. Farther above, Jack saw Branwen and Liam both hurling their fire and lightning again at Lombard to no avail. Even Zephyr appeared, trying to blow Lombard over with the force of his wind. Jack feared even Josie would dive down and foolishly try to turn him to gold, but she merely stared in horror.

Lurching back to his feet, Jack felt an awful sense of dread watching the slow pace of Lombard moving across the broken threshold into the courtyard, but before he could race after him and pound upon that shield until his arms broke apart in chunks if need be, Jack heard his name cried out like a scream of agony by a voice he had deeply missed.

“Jack!”

REARDON’S CLOAKwas wrapped around him as he rode full pelt, ahead of David and the others, toward the ensuing battle. Once they had neared the castle, he couldn’t lie in his wagon anymore.

Every gallop made more tears spring to his eyes, and calling to Jack with such force had come out more like a howl of pain—because it was one. He couldn’t let his own anguish stop him, however, not when he could see wounded soldiers and friends littering the expanse around him that he knew could so easily become casualties.

“Stop!” Reardon cried, riding past familiar faces on both sides, and in their surprise to see their prince, the soldiers who’d followed Lombard gave way and let him through. “Stop this! Lombard betrays us! These people are not our enemies!”

Many of them dropped their swords and stared, but enough kept fighting that Reardon knew he had to reach the gates to end this for good.

Jack was there, and Lombard was already moving into the courtyard.

As Reardon pushed on, he could see Shayla amid the soldiers, whirling like a graceful dervish with her daggers, Caitlin tripping up horses and men alike as though she too were a born fighter, and the tall, angular elf, Raphael, atop one of the horses, fighting bravely to drive the invaders back.

Subject after subject of the Frozen Kingdom was defending their home, including the female couple Reardon remembered best from his first night in the castle, one blond and one dark, working in elegant tandem as lovers should.

Reardon wanted that too, to at least reach Jack, even if he could barely raise his swords to fight beside him. He was so close but still felt leagues away.

It was at the sound of a wild, hysterical howl that Reardon looked up, seeing the court members first, floating above the chaos to rain down their elements or offer support, but then, soaring through the air from beyond the castle walls, came the source of that war cry.

Nigel, flung as if from a catapult—no, a trebuchet—hurtled into the throng with his own sword and dagger drawn. Reardon thought him absolutely mad, coming down far too fast, only to hit a cushion of air and float gently the rest of the way down like the wind had caught him.

The wind had.

Reardon watched as Nigel joined the others, brought into the battle by his love, who floated with the rest of the court to keep from touching anyone directly.

“Don’t you see? They wish you no harm if you’d only stop!” Reardon tried once more as he rode that much harder forward, reaching Jack at last and sliding so swiftly from his horse that the jostle pitched him to the side, and he nearly fell into the snow.

“Reardon!” Jack rushed to him, almost forgetting himself and grasping Reardon’s shoulders before he stopped.

He couldn’t touch him. If he did, Reardon would turn to ice like the awful garden of evildoers in the courtyard. The same courtyard where Lombard stood, right where he needed to be upon the cursed grounds, looking back at Reardon with a nasty grin.

“Ahh!” Reardon dropped to his knees, his cloak falling open to reveal the dagger, glowing and burning inside him with a white-hot pain even worse than before, as Lombard’s lips began to move, speaking his promised incantation.

“Reardon!” Jack cried again, dropping to his knees in kind to be closer to Reardon, so that, with the snow beneath and Jack right there in front of Reardon, all he saw was white.

And Jack’s beautiful blue eyes.

Far beyond the gates, up on the ramparts, Reardon caught a glimmer of Barclay, looking distraught and trying to call to him over the battle. Reardon couldn’t hear the words, but he didn’t need to. He understood now what the vision meant. He knew what he had to do to save them all, even if all might not mean him.

His friends were all around him, some above, all fighting so hard while trying not to cause harm to their attackers. The fighting seemed to quiet, though, and Reardon couldn’t be sure if the Emerald soldiers were stopping or if the pain of Lombard’s spell was making him deaf and blind to everything but what was right in front of him.

“I… love you,” Reardon choked out. “You. L-Lombard tried….”

“It doesn’t matter,” Jack said. “I love you too. What has he done to you?”

“Promise me.” Reardon cringed. The pain was growing so excruciating that he knew his time was short, but he had to ensure that he saved Jack and the others like he’d promised.

“Reardon, we need to—”

“Promise.”

“Of course. Anything.”

“Forgive yourself. B-believe… you’re a good… king… and move on.”

Tears tried to form in Jack’s eyes, but when they crested his cheeks, they froze. “I showed everyone my face.”

The pain forced Reardon forward onto his hands, yet still he smiled, because hearing that gave him a brief, stuttering beat of peace. “I’m glad… but say… y-you promise.”

Reardon could hear Lombard now, though he didn’t think anyone else could. The voice seemed to come from the dagger, echoing into his head, words he didn’t understand but that were unmistakably malicious.

More tears spilled onto Jack’s cheeks and froze. “I promise.”

“Thank you,” Reardon gasped, and using the last of his wavering strength, he heaved upward against the pain, reached for Jack’s face with both hands, and kissed his icy lips.

JACK COULDN’Texpress the horror of having Reardon kiss him, knowing what would happen.

It was unfairly slow, Reardon able to pull back and smile before the ice washed over him, freezing every part of him, sword belt and cloak and all—but not the dagger.

Thudding to the cold ground, the dagger was the only part of Reardon spared, because it was enchanted and had no place killing him anymore or fulfilling whatever sorcery Lombard had planned.

Reardon was already dead.

A howl exploded from Jack, so earthshattering that he almost expected Reardon to crack. The wail echoed long after he’d stopped releasing it, but afterward, everything else was silence. The soldiers, Jack’s subjects, they’d all stopped fighting, staring in wonder and horror at the frozen prince and the monster who would mourn him.

The dagger had been glowing while pierced in Reardon’s chest, but now it lay dull and dormant on the ground. Jack picked it up, and in his grief, he found rage, spinning around to see a similarly seething Lombard, who had rushed back to stand beneath the ruins of the castle gates. Whatever he’d been doing, Reardon’s sacrifice had stopped it.

Jack launched himself forward with a vicious cry, not trying to use his touch, just the dagger, and when the blade struck Lombard’s barrier, it didn’t bounce but caused a glowing crack to form like a bolt of lightning hanging midair.

The snarl vanished from Lombard’s face.

Jack struck with the dagger again, relentlessly stabbing into the shield as fiercely as he had tried to pummel Lombard before, and with each blow, the cracks in the magical armor began to multiply.

“Stop!” Lombard tried to scramble backward, but Jack kept at him, hitting again—again—again.

The shield shattered like translucent glass, and in one fierce movement, Jack grabbed Lombard’s shoulder, digging his icy claws into flesh, and stabbed the dagger downward into Lombard’s chest, piercing right through his metal armor like the blade was a white-hot poker.

Lombard was too stunned to cry out, Jack’s touch finally doing to him what it did to everything else. He froze right there with terror in his expression, a counterpoint to how Reardon had let it happen with a smile.

Finally, this time, the dagger too turned to ice. With the force of Jack ripping it free and tearing his claws out of Lombard’s frozen shoulder, Jack broke the ice that made up that awful man until he crumbled into pieces.

It should have been satisfying, dropping the frozen dagger onto the chunks of his enemy, but all Jack felt was numbness. He stared downward, not wanting to turn and see the statue of Reardon outside the gates.

“Majesty,” Oliver called, soft but also strangely loud with the battlefield silent.

Jack looked up, and Oliver, who had been on the ramparts with the archers, stood before him now, bow in hand. The court had all floated down too, in an arch surrounding Oliver, waiting on Jack’s next order.

“What say you?” Oliver asked, an arrow nocked and ready should Jack tell him to raise his bow and fire into the soldiers outside.

Now Jack had to turn and see how bad the damage had been to everyone else.

“If even one of our people has been maimed or killed…,” Branwen warned, his grumbling voice making many Emerald soldiers cower now that the energy of battle had dissolved.

But there were no prone bodies, only people limping or holding small wounds with the light pressure of a palm. The only casualty among the innocent was Reardon—smiling still like he was made of crystal instead of ice.

Stepping back out the gates so everyone could see and hear him, Jack rose as tall as he could. “Did you follow that man out of loyalty or fear? Because I never asked for the sacrifices you sent me. I took in your rejects and made them welcome in my home. You might see monsters, in them and in us, but you were also following one, and your prince chose to sacrifice himself to stop Lombard’s plan. I don’t even know what that madman wanted….”

“Immortality!” an unknown voice called.

All heads on the battlefield turned toward it, as a man came forward on horseback, leading all those who had joined the fray behind Reardon. When he stopped in the middle of the converged soldiers, he took his helmet off to reveal elven ears.

Those who had been with Lombard shared further looks of confusion.

“I am David, house of Zheck, a castle guard for Emerald. Prince Reardon told us everything he could. Lombard sought immortality, and as someone born without magic, he believed acquiring it from others was his only way to continue cheating death. I am happy to explain the rest to you, Majesty, but I say to you others, the Ice King speaks the truth.”

Others who had come with Reardon shed their helmets to proclaim their lineages to their fellows. Reardon had gathered his own army. He must have been so relieved, so proud, to have found allies in his own city.

Jack was still angry, still deeply grieving, but he knew that the one who deserved blame was already dead. “Throw down your weapons,” Jack called to the Emerald soldiers, “promise peace and no one else needs to die.”

He wasn’t sure if that would be enough, or if a few would be so terrified and bigoted against them that they would continue to fight or try to run.

None did, and after the first few dropped their weapons into the snow, others followed. Jack would invite them all in through the gates, but first he had to face the one part of this that he wasn’t sure he could stand.

Looking upon Reardon, glittering in the sun, Jack had to say goodbye. His eyes felt hot, but his tears were unable to become anything more than icicles on his cheeks.

Slowly, he walked back toward Reardon and spoke aloud, not trying to hide how his voice caught. “I am so sorry, my love. You asked me to forgive myself and move on, to see in me what you always did, and I will hold true to that promise. I am a good king, and I will be a good king hereafter, for you, for them, and for me.”

As gentle as he could, Jack reached his clawed hand to Reardon’s cheek, wishing he could feel its warmth one last time against his skin, but all he had to touch him with was ice.

Jack gasped at sudden cold—cold because he was touching ice, but his hand was starting to melt, and beneath was his human hand.

Snatching his hand back, Jack gaped, seeing the ice melt away rapidly. The relief was instant, the jagged edges and harsh cold of the ice that normally encased him vanishing from his body far more dramatically than he had ever seen it when night fell. In mere moments, he stood in the snow, naked but human.

“Jack!” Josie called, and when he looked back, he saw that she too was human—and so was everyone in the court.

They stood there—dressed, since their forms had always turned their clothing to their elements—gazing down at themselves in jubilant disbelief. They had changed forms just like Jack, and so too did the ice sculptures that filled the courtyard, melting away into nothing to join the dampness of the snow.

Those vile villains, along with Lombard’s pieces, returned to nothing because they deserved nothing, like the thief Jack had shattered the day he met Reardon—and the first thief who taught him about betrayal.

There had been others, though, too many, who had suffered the effects of an elemental touch without deserving to go up in flames, or fizzle, or turn to gold. Jack faced the courtyard leading to the castle and saw the doors as they burst open to let out not the archers or anyone remaining from the ramparts, but familiar faces that had once been thought dead, their remains shut in the cellar.

Even the Emerald soldier who Liam had touched appeared right where he’d been slain, at the edge of the courtyard wall.

Then a gasp, like an echo of Jack’s before, sounded from behind him, too close to be any of his subjects or the Emerald soldiers. Jack almost dared not turn, but he had to know.

Reardon was melting, not into nothing like those who had earned their fate, but having the ice melt from him, leaving him damp but whole again, standing before Jack with a relieved sigh and that same sweet smile.

Before Jack could move, Reardon tackled him, without any trace that the dagger ever existed save a tear in Reardon’s shirt. He threw himself at Jack so fully, they almost toppled over, but Jack steadied his feet upon the cold ground and held Reardon tight.

“You did it!” Reardon sobbed into his shoulder. “I wasn’t sure if it would work, if it would be enough, but you did it! You finally believed in you.”

Jack squeezed Reardon tight and kissed the side of his neck. “I did, but only because you believed in me first.”

As soon as Reardon lifted his head with that glorious, tear-stained smile, Jack kissed him. He kissed him as fiercely as he ever had and wished upon every power that existed that this not be an illusion.

Reardon’s warmth, his soft lips, his lithe body against Jack’s, felt better than any time before, standing in the light of the sun.

“Y-you’re naked!” Reardon exclaimed when they parted, hurrying to remove his cloak and wrap it around Jack.

Jack clasped it closed but couldn’t bring himself to care that dozens of people from two different kingdoms had just seen a naked Ice King with all his scars.

A triumphant holler came from the courtyard, and Jack and Reardon looked back to see Barclay finally having descended to join the others, Josie close at his side, as they were surrounded by the happy faces of the people returned to them—including the elf who had once tried to save Josie and paid for it.

At last, their curse was truly and finally—

Light erupted in the center of the battlefield so blindingly that, even though Jack and Reardon had been turned away, they still had to shield their eyes. Once it began to fade, they looked to where it had originated, and where the light dimmed stood a figure.

Her.

“Now,” the Fairy Queen said, in all her beauty and finery, “that is the ending I’ve been waiting for.”